Major Nanny

Epilogue

The silence in Harlan’s apartment was unnerving. Even though Stacy knew there was a guard posted outside to protect her and Zachary, she didn’t feel safe.

Not until Harlan finally came home.

He looked tired when he came through the door. Tired and a little haunted. After Harlan put him in charge of taking her and Zachary back to his apartment and posting a guard while he briefed the other CSI agents at the office, Matt Soarez had told Stacy what Harlan had kept from her: shooting Trevor Lewis had been the shot of a lifetime for Harlan, given the injury to his hand. Doctors had told him he’d never be able to shoot a rifle for accuracy again. It was a big damned deal.

But why hadn’t Harlan told her that? Why did she have to learn everything important about Harlan from other people?

“Zachary asleep?” he asked, shrugging off his overcoat to reveal his rumpled tuxedo. The tie was untied, hanging loose at the collar, and grime marred the snowy surface of his shirt.

“Yeah.” She wanted to be strong, not let her feelings show. Not until she knew he meant those words he’d whispered in her ear when he’d come into the chaotic crime scene to find her. She couldn’t deny she loved him, but she had to be sure she was making the right choices for Zachary and herself.

She’d loved Anthony, and look where that had gotten her.

“Any luck finding the gunman?”

Harlan shook his head. “We think he worked with Trevor Lewis to gain access to the ranch. I think Lewis had already planted the gun days ago so the man could sneak through the metal detector. The caterers had a man call in sick and hired a new guy without time to do much of a background check. We’ve got a description, but it’s pretty vague. But we’re still looking.” He crossed to where she sat curled up on his sofa. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?” she asked carefully.

There was almost no furniture in the room besides the sofa, not even a chair to pull up beside her. So he tugged the low coffee table forward and sat in front of her.

“That I had to deal with so much stuff before I could get back here to you.” He reached across the distance between them and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ears, the touch light but warm. He let his fingers slide slowly down the side of her face, until his hand came to rest on her shoulder, his thumb gently stroking her collarbone. “That I left in the middle of the night last night and didn’t get to wake up with you.”

Damn it. Why was it so impossible to stay angry with him?

“You could have left a note.” She tried not to get emotional, but after the day and night she’d just had, it would take a much harder woman than she to keep from feeling a little teary-eyed. “I mean, it was the first time we-”

He brushed his thumb across her trembling lower lip. “But not the last. Right?”

“You’re such a man.”

He grinned at her. “I’m afraid so.”

She released a soft sigh, knowing she loved him anyway. “I guess you were kind of busy.”

He eased off the coffee table and onto the sofa beside her, laying his arm across the back of the cushions. “When I got the call about Lewis, I had to go take care of it right then. And I know, I should have written a note, but all I thought about was getting Trevor out of the way so you and Zachary would be safe.”

With another little sigh, she snuggled closer to him. “You’ve got this whole apology thing all figured out, don’t you? Appeal to my concern for my son, snuggle up and make me feel warm and safe-you’re really pretty ruthless, Mr. McClain.”

He chuckled, the sound rumbling through her where their bodies touched. “I prefer the word determined.”

“Determined to do what?” She gave him a look of challenge.

“This.” He dipped his head, claiming her mouth with fierce intensity that had her head swimming in record time.

When he let her up for air a little later, she had forgotten why she’d ever been upset in the first place, although one sticking point came back a couple of minutes later, when Harlan was nuzzling the side of her neck. “You should have told me what a big deal it was to shoot a sniper rifle again.”

He drew back to look at her. “I wasn’t sure I could do it. It used to be as easy as breathing, but there was so much on the line tonight…”

The haggard look in his eyes did more to dispel the last of her doubts than anything he’d said. She rose to kiss him, hoping her touch would chase away his demons. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer until she was sitting in his lap.

He caught her face between his hands, holding her as if she were a treasure he would never relinquish. “You know I can’t let you go. Don’t you?”

A bubble of joy popped in the center of her chest, spreading its warmth. “I know. I can’t let you go, either. I thought it would make me feel weak and stupid to love you, but it doesn’t.”

He smiled at her, the expression taking years off his time-weathered face. “I love you, too. And I love that quirky, brilliant, amazing kid of yours, too.”

She nuzzled her forehead against his chin. “Good thing, ’cause we’re a package deal.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, bending in for another kiss. But before their lips touched, a plaintive voice spoke from the doorway.

“Will the horses know where to find me if I’m here?”

Stacy pulled away from Harlan and looked at her son, who stood in the doorway in his rumpled pajamas, his dark hair sticking up all over his sleepy head. She motioned for him to join them, sliding off Harlan’s lap so Zachary could sit there.

Zachary climbed onto Harlan’s lap, grinning up at him briefly before his expression went sober and worried again. “Can they find us? What if they think I’ve gone away forever?”

“They know where you are,” Harlan assured him, running his hand down Zachary’s back in a comforting caress. “Your mama and I told them personally.”

Zachary leaned his sleepy head against Harlan’s shoulder. The sight made Stacy’s heart liquefy. “Okay, then.”

Harlan looked at Stacy over the drowsy boy’s head. “We have to tell the horses where he is tomorrow,” he mouthed.

Happier than she could ever remember being, Stacy nodded and cuddled up to the two most important men in her life.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Paula Graves for her contribution to the Daddy Corps series.